


Within a Lifetime

by sloppy



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Character Study, Future Fic, Gen, Minor Original Character(s), Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 22:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5643412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppy/pseuds/sloppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out the third reincarnation of Hiryuu wants not to better society, feed the hungry, or service the oppressed, but to conquer the earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within a Lifetime

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of spoilery for chapters 100+ aka Zeno’s arc in general... and um... I am a sucker for Zeno, the ancient babysitter.

“You’re the Yellow Dragon.”

He stands before Hiryuu’s third reincarnation and notices: polished cheeks, untamed red locks, eyes as deep as fire, a scowl fitted into his mouth. The boy is twelve and in a crisp black uniform and followed Zeno into an alleyway escaping the wits of his limousine driver and bodyguards-in-sunglasses.

“Well, are you going to answer me?” His voice is taut with ingrained haughtiness, but if Zeno were to close his eyes, maybe he could imagine a king, a princess, hidden beneath. He does not close his eyes. “Are you my servant or not?”

Zeno has lived so long you would think he’s learned all there is to know about all there is to know, especially about dragon gods and their warriors. But the only thing he has come to solid conclusion with concerning the heavens is that they never meant to be cruel, even as they offered their own blood for the blood of thousands. They were desperate and lost in love, and couldn’t have known that combined the outcome would be perilous.

So whenever the heavens pulls things like _this_ over his head, Zeno counts backwards to ten until there is nothing in his head but the clouds he once cried at, desperate and lost in love.

“Yes,” he replies, slapping on a classic airy smile, “Zeno is yours.”

 

* * *

 

The current dragon warriors are just kids. 

None are over eighteen and all are in school. High school, Zeno thinks with wonder. Two-thousand years ago, maybe three, the concept was unheard of. Now human adults herd their offspring into concrete buildings for hours a day, staring at walls. Zeno can stare at walls for years and years if simply to pass the time, but at least he doesn’t have to _pay_ for it.

Hakuryuu is the oldest, stiff as a board. He doesn’t talk much and wears vision-correcting glasses over his thin nose that wrinkles whenever someone breathes too loudly. Ryokuryuu is perpetually bouncing off walls, occasionally literally. He converses in his home dialect from the West when angry and has a little sister he takes to ballet lessons on Sundays. Seiryuu eats at every opportunity he gets but stays slim. He’s nearly always heavy-eyed and all kinds of lazy, so it’s a wonder he even gets to class in one piece. Zeno feels a strange relief to see his face bare and open and stuffed with sweet bread.

He doesn’t hate them. He doesn’t hate them.

“What is it you want us to achieve?” asks Hakuryuu to their master, youngest of them all. When it comes down to it, they are a no-nonsense bunch. Whether it annoys Zeno or saddens him is not decided yet.

The boy stares out the window in prolonged dramatics. They are in an emptied conference room at the highest floor of some building, holy as an abandoned temple and cold as one, too—courtesy of Hiryuu himself. Or his parents.

This Hiryuu refuses to let anyone call him by his given name. Truth be told, Zeno has already forgotten it. He has forgotten all of their names. He remembers times when he would rather carve names onto his arms with a blade than forget, times when swords pierced bodies and unknowable sicknesses took away loves. Now he’s got a smartphone and a contact app.

The silence carves up a chunk of everyone’s patience, but eventually the response comes along.

“Help me rule the world.”

Oh, for gods’ sakes.

 

* * *

 

Zeno has heard people use the term “acquired taste” for wine and certain foreign delicacies. If you have not had enough substantial amounts of exposure to something, you will not like it at first contact. Zeno believes this Hiryuu-boy is an acquired taste. 

Somehow the child manipulates them into a single floor of a condominium, as if to round all his favorite toys in one place and keep track of them. At four o’clock in the morning, Zeno hears several loud bangs at his door that distracts him from his nighttime obscure cable marathon. He has not slept for years and finds the singing idols on tv adorable.

The door swerves open before he can answer it because, of course, the Hiryuu-boy has master keys. Zeno holds back a laugh when he spots the fancy pajamas embroidered in gold initials.

There’s that endearing frown again. “She’s always visits me and asks about you. Make her stop.”

“Who?” The lack of a greeting doesn’t phase him but the content of the demand does.

“The girl with long red hair and eyes like mine,” he says. “She comes in my dreams and bothers me to play a game with her. She treats me like a child and I don’t like it.”

There is an electric shock that runs down his back to the tips of his fingers. The confusion clears up in a smoke of clarity. “What—” He catches himself. “What does she say about Zeno?”

But, as Zeno should have recalled, Hiryuu is no bush-beater. He stares with steely concentration. “Who is she?”

“Zeno thinks the lad already knows.”

“Is she the last Hiryuu?”

“Zeno thinks the lad already knows!”

He blinks a few times, then drops his scowl, looking more like a first year in middle school than ever. “She asked how you’re doing and I told her you could be doing much fairer. She asked if you were sleeping and I told her I didn’t care. She said she missed you and was sorry.” His voice lowers. “She hugged me and I…”

When he realizes he’s let something slip that he probably meant to keep to himself, he clams up and his face hardens again. “Just make her go away!”

Zeno couldn’t do that if he tried. He couldn’t dream, and even if he could, if she were there, dreaming is all he would do for the rest of forever. “Zeno can’t, lad. Maybe if the lad asked nicely…?”

He lost the rest of his words when he saw his new master bite his bottom lip and flush a soft red. Zeno understood at a glance, then threw his head back and laughed with genuine amusement.

“Shut up!” exclaimed the boy, fists whitening. “Shut up, shut up! Ugh!”

Like a storm, he leaves the wreckage of an upturned vase on the floor as he exits the apartment and plugs his fingers in his ears to drown out Zeno laughing.

It was hilarious. The boy was so narcissistic he actually grew a crush on a _past reincarnation_. Zeno plans to share this tomorrow to the rest of his dragon brothers.

No, he doesn’t hate them.

How could he?

 

* * *

 

Again and again, Zeno loses time. It’s a lot faster when he is alone, and if he were confined to solitude, he’d deal with the passing quite easier than with people. With people, it can be different.

The boy is no longer a boy. Just like Yona was no longer a girl after a while, or how Hiryuu was no longer a dragon.

Unsurprisingly, they have yet to conquer the world. Conquering the world includes quite a bit of politicking, and Zeno has zero tolerance for the subject, so he lets the Hiryuu-not-really-a-boy-anymore take on the reign for it instead. He actually enjoys it, even. Revels in the backstabbing and underhandedness. Zeno really needs to gift him spa tickets or a puppy or something.

His new brothers—that he should stop calling new, as they have not been for a while—have less of a need for their powered abilities than their predecessors. Hakuryuu wears leather gloves and is his master’s assigned bodyguard. Ryokuryuu has a marriage set in spring and drinks cheap wine. Seiryuu cheats at poker and teaches others how to cheat at poker.

Ouryuu is the same as he has always been. He waits for nothing, sometimes for everything. He hangs around Hakuryuu, turns in his RSVP to Ryokuryuu, and loses to Seiryuu at cards. The third Hiryuu has not had any more dreams about the second, and although Zeno should feel disconnected and lost, he doesn’t.

One day in the middle of waiting, it registers.

“Lad,” he says to his Hiryuu-boy, always a boy to him, in his office. “Why does the lad want to rule the world?”

His heart throbs waiting for an answer. He berates inwardly—how had he never asked this before? How had no one?

“There is no right answer.” Once again, the boy gazes out a window, but this time Zeno does not find it dramatic or silly. He sees that it is familiar, and that he has seen it time after time again on different faces. “I feel it is something I must do.”

Zeno anticipates the future and grazes elbows with the past. He does not wish to live in the present, until he comprehends that is all he can do. He is the present. He is the past. But he is not the future; that lies in the gaze of this man whose childish wish will be fulfilled by gods and dragons.

And he doesn’t mind, because Zeno doesn’t hate them. He doesn’t hate them at all.


End file.
